Horselover, I'm going to try to read this and Sixpence House also. And will be travelling for two weeks at Thanksgiving.

Here come the thunderstorms. time to get off.

JA, JAB sounds fine to me. And little brother -- A?

Serendipity today, waiting for the car's checkup. The Time above has a review of GGM's autobiography, which is apparently a blockbuster seller in Latin America. The one page review gives a clue as to why some of us might find 100 Years a bit bizarre, so far.

Meg, thanks for your advice -- I love the way you write. Since I do admit to being a water rat I will follow your advice and go with the flow.

I'm going to print out the questions above and ponder.

Oh yes, I truly welcome solitude. I enjoy being with others, but love the days I can be by myself. But would I feel the same if there were never to be any others?

"First in the order of genesis comes essence since it spreads out the field of forms through which existence may travel and may pick up one form after another along its special path. Matter in this order is second and truth third; for truth is the ideally complete description of the existing world, as it is, has been, and is to be. Finally spirit with all its discoveries comes last, because the psyche -- without which spirit could not arise or live -- is a trope established in matter; that is to say, a truth concerning the order and cohesion of certain events in the flux of nature."
George Santayana ~ Animal Faith 1967 p.145-46.

Only in the last years the solitude has been considered like a clinical problem, that it requires of a specific therapy.

The subject has received enormous importance, since it has a high incidence, as much in the population in general like in people who present/display some degree of misalignment.

The solitude also is considered like one of the possible factors that cause other disorders. Among them depression, suicide and serious medical problems, like the cardiovascular diseases.

This problem systematically had been denied like an upheaval that it requires of a serious attention, perhaps because who not always undergo it admit that she can be the root of other evils. Or they do not want to recognize itself like "single", because they experience shame of its feelings or their inadecuación to surpass the isolation.

One does not know what is the consolation of the heart but when we remained single. - Edgar Allan Poe

There is no greater poverty than the solitude. - Mother Teresa de Calcuta

Perhaps the greater mistake about the solitude is that everyone goes by the world believing to be the unique one that suffers it. - Jeanne Marie Laskas

The solitude is the teacher who with time teaches to you what you were, is and will be. - anonymous

The rhymed quatrains of Nostradamus were written mainly in French with a bit of Italian, Greek, and Latin thrown in. He intentionally obscured the quatrains through the use of symbolism and metaphor, as well as by making changes to proper names by swapping, adding or removing letters. The obscuration is claimed to have been done to avoid his being tried as a magician. Of course a skeptic might say it was done so the quatrains could be interpreted to fit numerous situations.

For him (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) everything that occurred in his childhood had a literary value, which he started appreciating as he grew up, and decided that he wanted to be only a writer, "the best writer in the world." - writing became not only a necessity, but a sweet refuge, the only place no one else can touch, a spot where he can monitor and assimilate and understand the "wild reality" of his chosen territory - the Caribbean, "Why set it anywhere else, when it offers everything," . - in my childhood, when the people in my village were looking for the body of a drowned man. They took a calabash, put a lighted candle in it and placed it on the river. I remember the scene well. I was about seven then, the candle was swept by the current from one bank to another. Then it stopped at a certain spot and started going round in circles. That was where the drowned man was. The villagers dragged him out of the water like a huge fish. I think that the Caribbean today is a bit like the spot where the candle came to a halt after drifting all over the place.

To me the Caribbean offers everything: indigenous peoples, blacks, Chinese, Arabs, Europeans, Panama canal workers and so on...."

Yes, set in the Caribbean. And epidemics. And death. All a very essential part of his work. "I've always thought about death. Once I had a dream about a "festive" and happy occasion I spent with friends: my own funeral. Perhaps, a premonition.

"Garcia Marquez reminds us that those who read stories read the story of their own lives, and the consciousness of author, character and reader slide into overlap again."

"Garcia Marquez reminds us that those who read stories read the story of their own lives, and the consciousness of author, character and reader slide into overlap again."

For me during all reads, I question why the author chose that place and that character with those characteristics and if they are characteristics I have not encountered regularly I want to learn more...I also pick up on similarities without intending or out and out looking for them - an in-depth or what for many is a second read has always been for me like a detective putting together a jigsaw puzzle of symbols and allusions - I will go to any cultural goodie if it better explains something foreign to my lifestyle - I like to share the excitement of my finds - to learn something new to me is grand - if the find does not bring the character or place more alive for you that is fine, really --

Joan said: Lou! You made it! And George, I was thinking again over GGM's words..."those who read stories read the story of their own lives." Doesn't that sound like a challenge of sorts? Since the both of you are having trouble getting into GGM's world, you might be candidates here? Will you accept the challenge to find your own lives within these pages? I think I'll double dog dare you!

`Drake is coming!' . . . The exclamation summed up everything. El Draque, or `The Dragon', as he was called, meant battle, ruin, mourning and desolation.

It was synonymous with the approach of violence, pillage, cruelty and slaughter,. . . his ships left a wake of freshly spilled blood . . .

I find none of the protagonists likable and some of the more graphic descriptions of brutality repulsive.

I have been trying to do everything at once and, as a result, finished nothing. Many things are left undone, and I am decidedly UNready.

But I will get back to the Buendías as soon as I can, especially Amaranta, and also the 17 illegitimate sons of Colonel Aureliano, all of whom have the look of solitude, and at least one is as telepathic as the Colonel himself. As for Amaranta, I do not believe the sexual relationship with Aureliano, her nephew, was consummated. They came dangerously close (as in Les liaisons dangereuses , book and movie) but she backed off, and her fear of a real pig's tail on a baby born of an incestuous union had something to do with it.

True, there are comic elements in the book, improbable phantasmagoric happenings, a dig or two against catholicism, but it becomes clearer as we read that this is ultimately a tragedy, for Colombia and for the fictional Buendías, whose decline is irreversible.

What impresses me is the (stabilizing, IMHO) influence the women have in the novel, beginning with Úrsula who bears up under all kinds of adversities, builds the new house, tends to her lucrative candy business, 'rearranges the furniture' after every new calamity and just goes on.

About solitude : Could we define it perhaps also as extreme introspection, a withdrawal from everyone and everything ? The many combinations in which GMM mentions solitude are worth noting, e.g. Aureliano José as a palliative for Amaranta's solitude .

More soon.

http://www.motherearthtravel.com/history/colombia/history-5.htm

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/marquez.htm

Edit -- Links repaired

Arcadio , son of JA Jr., desires Pilar Ternera, not realizing she is his mother. But Pilar does and substitutes at the last minute a virgin with the improbable name of Santa Sofía de la Piedad. Pilar pays off both the girl and her parents.

Santa Sofía de la Piedad gives birth to a girl, not immediately named because the parents are not married, and becomes pregnant again. The reader knows that JA is executed and, before his execution, names the girl 'Remedios' and also the unborn child - except that there are twins, subsequently named Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo (despite Ursula's misgivings about the repetition of the names and the traits they seem to carry). This then is the fourth generation of the Buendías.

I did not mean to anticipate things yet to happen in the novel, but simply to "nail down" the family tree. Of course there are lots of other intriguing issues and details to consider, and I look forward to that.

http://www.zonalatina.com/Zldata77.htm

I can't see any similarity between the warm-hearted, practical, always keen-to-understand, eager-to-seek-harmony Úrsula on the one hand and Fernanda on the other. Fernanda is so rigid as to be inflexible and has several obsessions (with property, class, her repressed self, and most of all religion).

No one understands Remedios the Beauty because she has no interest in the physical, practical side of life, no knowledge of physical urges and how they are satisfied (let alone if satisfaction is obtained by means other than human intercourse). "The boy (José Arcadio Segundo) became so taken with those nocturnal raids that it was a long time before he was seen at Catarino's." (pg.203) We knew all along, of co urse, what sort of a 'store' Catarino's is.

While the twins are simultaneously linked with Petra Cotes (she is the third strong female character in the Buendía clan) , they both come down with a STD from which they cure themselves with permanganate. In his new autobiographical book GMM confides that he himself was "a veteran of two bouts of gonorrhea".

Úrsula's fear of a baby born with a pig's tail may be superstition, but she had a cousin from an incestuous marriage who was in fact born with a pig's tail and wore wide pants to hide it, until a friendly butcher, trying to do him favor, cut it off with a machete, whereupon the cousin promptly bled to death.

http://www.bcspca.com/Factsheets/factsheet_cockfighting.htm

Unlike Bingo, cockfighting is not an innocuous game, nor is it, I believe, officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church, and unlike Bingo it certainly is not played in church halls.

But the church seems even now to close its eyes to this gruesome "sport", which is still widely practiced in the Philippines. One of the blue links on the left within the link in # 405 offers a series of pictures and captions, which are very telling (as well as disgusting, to me, especially the grinning face of "A Winner" at the end).

Another blue link on the left within the link in # 405 shows the history of cockfighting in Britain (!). _____

Úrsula was 100 years old when Aureliano Segundo's son was born; I gave the page number in an earlier post.

JOAN, it is difficult, if not impossible, to pin down GMM regarding specific decades or years, even known periods of time. We get the casual mention of Sir Francis Drake and the Duke of Marlborough. GMM is (clearly) all-inclusive and perhaps purposely vague.

There are circumstances in chapters X and XI we might scrutinize further. For example, who was the well-dressed military officer who came to see Fernanda's father and closeted himself with him, resulting in Fernanda's sudden journey to another region in the country ? Who paid for the luxurious clothes, the emeralds and the ermine cape ? For what purpose?

The appearance of Fernanda in Macondo as rival carnival queen with a costumed retinue was a provocation in itself (after all, Remedios the Beauty was the carnival queen and Aureliano Segundo a major organizer), but was it not also a politically motivated, deliberately-engineered challenge to Macondo and ultimately the Buendías ? I tend to believe that it was a conspiracy pure and simple, even if Fernanda herself had most likely no idea.

"...a [book] discussion...is like a pot luck dinner. Bring whatever you have to the table. Don’t come empty-handed and expect to eat for free. Together, we make a feast!" -- Author Wally Lamb in Couldn't Keep it to Myself

"When you sit down to write, you've got to be better than Cervantes,you won't be, but it will be the right spur." He also says, "What's essential in fiction is not what's true, but what seems to be true, that's what's wonderful!"

Lou, will you explain a few things about cockfighting since you have firsthand experience? Is the sole purpose of raising these cocks to fight them? Is that why your dad raised them? Does "beauty" count for much in a fighter? Is the sole reason for fighting them to gamble? Are more bets made on the beauties? Were the spurs your father made for the cocks made for fighting? I was interested that your sister thought the cockfight she attended was an adventure. Weren't you surprised that she didn't come back whitefaced with a description of the gorey bloodletting? I looked up "aceheel," but can't find it. It sounds as if an "aceheel" has a special talent! It does seem to me a strange sport for Father Isabel to be engaged in...does it to you? I'd be interested to know how YOU feel about cockfighting? Does it sound like a bloodsport would be something a man o'the cloth would go in for

I'm wondering how you feel about the suggestion to read James Joyce's Ulysses in the spring...it is the 100th anniversary since it was publshed.

"One Hundred Years is the entire region of Santa Marta, Cienaga, the banana-growing region, and then the Sierra Nevada all the way to Riohacha. Aracataca lies at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It's hot but at the same time it's cool at night due to the mountains and the streams that flow down from the Sierra. It has a deep, crystal-clear river that flows over a bed of huge rocks that resemble prehistoric eggs, like Gabo writes in One Hundred Years. There's a dry season and a rainy season. The downpours are tremendous.

Gbo had a friend whose grandfather came from Italy and set up a general store in Aracataca, which became a kind of meeting place. He brought a phonograph and a gramophone, and set up movies in the patio of the house. They would send him the films by train from Santa Marta. García Márquez's grandfather would visit often — he would drink his cup of coffee and the two grandfathers would exchange ideas.

The people of Aracataca used candles and kerosene lamps. We used to gather in the dark and there was always someone who would tell mystery stories, scary ones, tales of terror. I would be scared to death going back home in that awful darkness to sleep in my bed.

Gabo remembers those stories they used to tell—things that many people have forgotten. He has an elephant's memory. When he was a small boy they would tell him that at the bottom of the clay water jars in Aracataca there lived some duendes [sprites]. So, he'd go and try to get them out—fill our glasses trying to get the midgets. Delicious cool water."

A few of the guerrilla leaders were acquainted with the "Codigo de Maceo", a code that covered all the aspect of the guerrilla warfare. The "Codigo de Maceo" was one of the products of the Cuban independence war at the end of the XIX century. The cruelty of the guerrilla incursions could only be matched by the heavy measures taken by the government forces against the civil population. This situation created a painful stalemate. Only after the capitulation in 1903 of Rafael Uribe, the political leader of the liberals with the signing of the treaty of Neerlandia did the war end.

The civil war lasted two and a half years; thus historians named it the "1,000 days war". The government forces were victorious but their political position was weak both internally and abroad.

excerpt -- "Throughout Colombo's log of this first voyage...is the obsession with gold...despite the fact that Colombo found very little gold....In a final reference to Colombo's log, one can also find the dual mission Colombo undertook,

"...Your Highnesses must resolve to make them (the Taino - Oh-Toh-Kin ed.) Christians. I believe that if this effort commences, in a short time a multitude of peoples will be converted to our Holy Faith, and Spain will acquire great domains and riches and all of their villages. Beyond doubt there is a very great amount of gold in this country... Also, there are precious stones and pearls, and an infinite quantity of spices" (Colombo's log, November 11, 1492).

The duality of Colombo's mission, and the subsequent European invasion that followed, was the Christianization of non-Europeans and the expropriation of their lands. The two goals are not unconnected; "Christianization" was not merely a program for European religious indoctrination, it was an attack on non-European culture (one barrier to colonization) and a legally and morally sanctioned form of war for conquest. "Even his name was prophetic to the world he encountered -- Christopher Columbus translates to `Christ-bearer Colonizer'."

Colombo would make four voyages in all, the remaining two in 1498 and 1502. His voyages around the Caribbean... -- capturing Native peoples for slavery and extorting gold through a quota of a hawks bell of gold dust to be supplied by every Native over the age of 14 every 3 months. Failure to fill the quota often entailed cutting the `violators' hands off and leaving them to bleed to death. Hundreds of Carib and Arawak were shipped to Spain as slaves under Colombo's governorship, 500 alone following his second voyage. Indeed, the absence of a "great amount of gold" in the Caribbean had Colombo devising another method of financing the colonization: "The savage and cannibalistic Carib should be exchanged as slaves against livestock to be provided by merchants in Spain."

Colombo died in 1506, but following his initial voyage to the Americas, wave upon wave of first Spanish, then Portuguese, Dutch, French and British expeditions followed, carrying with them conquistadors, mercenaries, merchants, and Christian missionaries.

...one year after Colombo's first voyage, Pope Alexander VI in his inter cetera divina papal bull granted Spain all the world not already possessed by Christian states, excepting the region of Brazil, which went to Portugal.

Meanwhile, Amerigo Vespucci...and Alonso de Ojedo, on separate missions for Spain...actively carrying out slave raids...

From the papal bull of 1493 and a subsequent Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Portugal had been given possession of Brazil.

From 1517 to 1521, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes laid waste to the Aztec empire in Mexico, capturing the capital city of Tenochtitlan and killing millions in a ruthless campaign for gold.

1524, Pedro de Alvarado invaded the region of El Salvador...In Guatemala Alvarado conducted eight major campaigns against the Mayans, and while he and his men were burning people alive, the Catholic priests accompanying him were busy destroying Mayan historical records (that is, while they weren't busy directing massacres themselves). Alvarado's soldiers were rewarded by being allowed to enslave the survivors.

1531, the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro invaded the region of the Incas (now Peru).

1541, Pedro de Valdivia claimed Chile for the Spanish crown...

EXPANSION, EXPLOITATION, AND EXTERMINATION

The colonization process were directed towards exploiting the lands and peoples to the fullest.

The primary activity was the accumulation of gold and silver...This accumulation was first accomplished through the crudest forms of theft and plunder (ie. Colombo's and Cortes' methods). Eventually, more systematic forms were developed, including the encomiendas -- a form of taxation imposed on Indigenous communities that had been subjugated, and the use of Indigenous slaves to pan the rivers and streams.

By the mid-1500s, the expropriation of gold and silver involved intensive mining. Entire cities and towns developed around the mines. Millions of Indigenous peoples died working as slaves in the mines...By the end of the 1500s, Potosi was one of the largest cities in the world at 350,000 inhabitants...

From the time of the arrival of the first European colonizers until 1650, 180-200 tons of gold -- from the Americas -- was added to the European treasury. In today's terms, that gold would be worth $2.8 billion. During the same period, eight million slaves died in the Potosi mines alone.

Slavery...Not only for work in the mines, but also for export to Europe. In Nicaragua alone, the first ten years of intensive slaving, beginning in 1525, saw an estimated 450,000 Miskitu and Sumu peoples shipped to Europe. Tens of thousands perished in the ships that transported them.

In the highlands...the Spanish were able to grow crops such as wheat, cauliflower, cabbage, lettuce, radish, sugar cane, and later grapes, bananas, and coffee. By the mid-1500s, using slave labour, many of these crops -- particularly wheat and sugar cane -- were large-scale exports for the European markets...sprawling herds of cattle...which rarely exceeded 800 or 1,000 in Spain reached as many as 8,000 in Mexico. By 1579, some ranches in northern Mexico had up to 150,000 head of cattle...

Despite the genocidal policies of the conquistadors, Native resistance continued...between 1532 and 1625, the population of the Andean peoples is estimated to have declined from 9 million to 700,000.

In 1742...an Indigenous resistance movement in Peru...fought off Spanish colonization for more than a century.

the 1780 Indian rebellion...laid siege to La Paz from March to October 1781 during which one fourth of the city's population died..."

The leaders, perceived or real, were captured and executed; they were quartered, decapitated, or burned alive.

While Indigenous resistance continued -- the colonies themselves began to experience movements for independence -- like in the US -- found in the oppressive taxation and monopolistic trade laws imposed by the colonial centers...Creoles were generally by-passed for colonial positions which went to agents born in Spain."

"I was and am intrigued not so much by the "national character" as by what that character conceals: by what is behind the mask.

According to the classics of nineteenth-century revolutionary thought, revolution would be the consequence of development: the urban proletariat would put an end to the inequality between technological and economic development (the way of industrial production) and little or no social progress (the way of capitalist ownership).

On the other hand, the models of development that the West and East offer us today are compendiums of horrors.

As people on the fringes, inhabitants of the suburbs of history, we Latin Americans are uninvited guests who have sneaked in through the West's back door, intruders who have arrived at the feast of modernity as the lights are about to be put out.

Can we plan a society that is not based on the domination of others and that will not end up like the chilling police paradises of the East or with the explosions of disgust and hatred that disrupt the banquet of the West?"

"Ursula put a finger on her heart.
'Here,' she said

Marvelle

Marvelle

Marvelle

If the children turned out to be "incapable of love" as we are told, that may well have been their predisposition (or genetic makeup, we could say), not necessarily the result of their upbringing. When the teenage José Arcadio, her first-born, ran off with the Gysies, Úrsula ran after him, leaving behind the nursing baby, Amaranta. We are not told where she went, just that she eventually came back without the boy but with a group of different people who settled in Macondo.

JOAN, no, the death of Colonel Aureliano did not surprise me. He came home a different man, worn out and prematurely aged by the endless warring and rebellions, and perhaps tired after his countless amorous encounters. He no longer had any lust for life. After his final return there is no purpose in his life, other than the eternal cycle of meticulously making and adorning the little fishes, selling them, and melting down the coins received in payment to make more of the same.

There are beautiful lyrical, even moving passages and striking similes in the book, but the description of Colonel Aureliano's death is rather crude, even indelicate. Also there is the story (not mentioned here before) of Fernanda's golden chamber pot with the royal crest that she won't give up, to Úrsula's consternation (and then has more made).

Actually, I did not see Colonel Aureliano as the central figure, in fact I believe there is no one central figure in the book. Rather it presents, I think, the story of six generations of Buendías, the rise and fall of one family in the span of one hundred years. But we will have to wait for the end to find out.

MARVELLE, how good to see you here ! It's been a long time. Your input is always valuable. Thank you.

Only Fernanda calls her daughter "Renata" after her own mother. Everybody else calls her "Meme", which is short for Remedios.

The vowel 'e' in Meme is pronounced as in "sole" or "guacamole", and the sound is similar to the French accent aigu in André, René, Désirée for example.

Renata is the Latin 'reborn', and 'remedio' = 'remedy'.

# 506

Thank you, MARYAL, for the definitions.

I know for a fact that in the early nineteen hundreds, pessaries were used in Europe as a contraceptive (!). In the last twenty-five years they have been used as relief for a prolapsed uterus and, after a hysterectomy, as a remedy for a prolapsed bladder.

Question 2. Why did Amaranta fervently hope to outlive Rebecca ?

Because she was mean-spirited and vengeful.

She started to sew and embroider as a young girl with the Moscote sisters and became an expert. It was natural (for her) to create her own burial shroud - if only to prolong her life, as she tried to do for years.

Can we take the ghosts and apparations, like Prudencio Aguilar, JAB, Death, who appeared in person to Amaranta, or the invisible French doctors literally ? Or are the doctors a product of Fernanda's repressed, feverish fantasies ?

Let's hold on to our hats. GMM has a few more stunning surprises in store for the reader.

Marvelle

But did they even know the concept of happiness ? Those who worked certainly worked hard- particularly in the early years; later when they played, gambled and caroused, they did it to the point of exhaustion. Bathing in champagne and papering the house with peso bills ("I wish we were poor again", muses Úrsula), Aureliano Segundo's gourmandizing competition with Camila, called Elephant, were all excesses and must have brought them satisfaction and a sense of achievement, but happiness ?

Marvelle

Marvelle

Oh yes, there is irony aplenty, and also very sharp (shall we say?) observations, for instance on pg. 245

"The gringos, who later on brought their languid wives in muslin dresses and large veiled hats, built a separate town across the railroad tracks with streets lined with palm trees, houses with screened windows, small white tables on the terraces, and fans mounted on the ceilings, and extensive blue lawns with peackocks and quails. The section (sic) was surrounded by a metal fence topped with a band of electrified chicken wire which during the cool summer mornings would be black with roasted swallows. No one knew as yet what they were after, or whether they were actually nothing but philanthropists, and they had already caused a colossal disturbance, much more than that of the old gypsies, but less transitory and understandable.... It was at that time that they built a fortress of reinforced concrete over the faded tomb of José Arcadio, so that the corpse's smell would not contaminte the waters."

There is more to ponder on that same page. There can hardly be no doubt that the conditions under which the people worked for the banana company were abominable and that they were taken as complete fools. Complicity on the part of the gringos in the massacre, or quiet acquiescence at the very least, is strongly implied. Later GMM speaks of the "electrified chicken coop".

By the time Fernanda thought she might consult the gringo doctor, the company was closing down, and she could not bring herself to see the French doctor in town, because she considered him "arrogant". (He was probably the same who took care of the French matrons (so-called).)

MARYAL, I can neither empathize nor pity Fernanda, only shake my head. I marvel at people who are so hopelessly dense and fixated and, ultimately, beyond reach and beyond help. The cruelty toward Meme and the baby is incomprehensible and unforgivable, especially from someone so pious.

JOAN, you asked why Aureliano Segundo did not believe what his twin told him - simple enough : Aureliano Segundo was duped like everyone else in Macondo and elsewhere in the country; the Government and the military drummed in their "truth" very convincingly.

You asked about my experience. That is a long story. To sum it up: I escaped from Germany a few months before the end of WWII with one suitcase. I re-entered Germany in September of 1947 with a passport issued by the International Red Cross.